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authorLars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi>2020-04-12 12:06:44 +0300
committerLars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi>2020-04-12 12:06:44 +0300
commitca85db40ebd8f15510fa5ec7bbc70e59c8c9b937 (patch)
tree8be81db59322c7e797f6f0cac289b85ee50caafa
parentca8d2616987482e0e398d53e9d8e7a5030fc8760 (diff)
downloadideas-ca85db40ebd8f15510fa5ec7bbc70e59c8c9b937.tar.gz
Change: tweak email essay draft
-rw-r--r--email2-v2-draft.md35
1 files changed, 23 insertions, 12 deletions
diff --git a/email2-v2-draft.md b/email2-v2-draft.md
index fe73df5..bddd818 100644
--- a/email2-v2-draft.md
+++ b/email2-v2-draft.md
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ that I give to online shops as contact information. My main address has
been used for free and open source software contribution for many years.
I get less than two valid emails a day, usually from friends. Also, a
-small number of notification emails from my own automated system. I get
+small number of notification emails from my own automated systems. I get
on the order of 400 spam and scam emails a day. They vary greatly in how
targeted they are. They are all unsolicited and unwelcome.
Unfortunately, despite honing my email filters for decades now,
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ spam, and I'm at risk of missing it.
Sometimes those emails are important, such as questions about some of my
contributions. If I didn't skim my spam folder manually I would've
missed the email about some of my software being used in Africa to
-provide local people with valuable services that would've been
+provide local people with useful SMS services that would've been
financially impossible with proprietary software.
There are good aspects the existing Internet email has that are still
@@ -257,8 +257,8 @@ this essay may address that.
Digital stamps
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-A digital stamp is a digital issued by recipients which gives senders
-the capability to send messages to the recipient.
+A digital stamp is a digital token issued by a recipient which gives a
+sender the capability to send one or more messages to the recipient.
A digital stamp is more powerful than a physical, paper stamp. Paper
stamps can be transferred (sold, given) without limit. A digital stamp,
@@ -308,12 +308,22 @@ sender having to produce some proof of work, which can be made
arbitrarily costly in terms of computing resources. For example, the
proof of work might require using five seconds of CPU time. This is
costly enough that it makes large-scale spamming infeasible. (See
-[@hashcash] for an early suggestion.)
+[@hashcash] for an early suggestion.)
-> Comment: This makes the stamp system vulnerable to attackers who
-> have enormous amounts of computing power, perhaps by using a botnet.
-> It would be good to replace proof-of-work with something that's not
-> vulnerable to a botnet.
+This makes the stamp system vulnerable to attackers who have enormous
+amounts of computing power, perhaps by using a botnet. It would be
+good to replace proof-of-work with something that's not vulnerable to
+a botnet.
+
+Alternatively, the email server could require the person sending the
+email to solve a [CAPTCHA][]-like puzzle, which can be made
+sufficiently varied to make it difficult to solve automatically. The
+actual puzzle does not need be standardized, only the mechanism by
+which the user is pointed at it, and how the result is communicated
+back to the mail server. There could, and should, be a very large
+number of different puzzles.
+
+[CAPTCHA]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA
Email servers could also sell stamps for real money. Even at trivial
costs, such as one US/EURO cent, this would be too costly for spammers.
@@ -330,9 +340,10 @@ help? If not, why not? Can you see a way for a miscreant to circumvent
the proposed solution to get their unwanted message delivered to the
recipient?
-Let me know, preferably via email or the [GitLab issue system][]. If you
-want to propose improvements to the essay, feel free to file a merge
-request or send patches.
+Let me know, preferably via the legacy email system, as a response to
+this [fediverse thread][], or using the [GitLab issue system][]. If
+you want to propose improvements to the essay, feel free to file a
+merge request or send patches.
[GitLab issue system]: https://gitlab.com/larswirzenius/ideas/-/issues